The experience of being a judge at GLLA this past weekend was pretty surreal. I’ve judged before at a local bar contest and at International, but for some reason the regional seems more important.

At the bar level contest, it wasn’t built to feed into anything and the people running had been coaxed into it. It wasn’t a decision of theirs. So, once I realized they weren’t taking it seriously, I stopped taking it seriously.

At the International level, they’ve already done the work to get there. Regional is where they have to prove themselves. International has them competing against others that have proven themselves at a regional level. AT this point they’ve shown their stuff before and been judged on it. Now ‘it is what it is’. Best foot forward, but if nothing else, ‘I made it to International.’

So, to me, the Regional level is more important. This couple represents the region, the contest producers and the regional community. Knowing this, has me feeling like I’m under a larger spotlight.

I think we had a hard time this time around because there were 3 couples. This is a first for GLLA. And even worse, they were all great couples in their own right. The scoring points were amazingly close. All of us as judges were talking about the closeness, and just decided that we vote with our hearts and let the points fall as they may.

It was also a hard spot for me because I knew one of the couples. It’s hard enough to judge anyone, let alone someone I know and their sad history. I had to keep from crying a couple of times. Some of the judges weren’t so successful with that. Oddly enough I didn’t have an issue with remaining un-biased. That was one of the biggest worry’s.

Another worry was that I wouldn’t fit in. A couple of the judges I didn’t know but there was also Master Z of Dallas and Master Alex Keppler. I’ve chatted with them both bore, but Master Dan has been with me and did most of the talking. In this situation, I was a ‘peer’ as a judge but also slave on a team of mostly Masters. So, there was the potential of messing up and making my Master look bad. He didn’t seem to be worried about it though.

Huh, I just realized that he didn’t give me any rules or guidance about my judging. That’s odd. Or is it because I didn’t ask if he had any requirements. It used to be that I would have asked. So, does that mean that it doesn’t matter? Or that his requirements are so ingrained in me that I don’t have to ask. It better be the latter.

I also had to go through the phase of ‘what will I wear?’. I wanted to wear my corsets but it’s hard to sit in a corset for that many hours though. I know, first world problems.

I did get over my ‘i don’t like to judge people’ thing though....by telling myself that i’m not judging them, i’m judging their actions ....and i want the best couple to represent what it is that i love and to show a good example.